BurningbirdI had an extra day with my broadband coverage today, and I thought I would use it to the full to stock up on reading material, as well as put several things online. My Mac desktop is now littered with dozens of web pages that I’ve saved, like parchment skins in the study of a miserly scholar. I may not have the ability to immediately interact or instantly pursue a new tangent if it arises, but at least my gleanings won’t attract bugs or mildew if it becomes too damp.
Yesterday, Matt Mullenweg posted a link to a weblog entry in the Ziff-Davis weblog Open Source. Matt and others, including myself, wrote some fairly critical material about the post because the writer seemed to confuse open source with syndication feed use:
One problem open source advocates seldom acknowledge is the disrespect many people have toward what’s held in common…Lately I’ve seen my RSS feeds becoming heavily polluted by RSS spam – entries that are just ads, or sets of links that all lead to purchases (on which the spammer gets a cut)…Question is, who polices what no one owns? How can we maintain the cleanliness of the commons against those who don’t share its ethics? It’s a question that has haunted the Internet for 10 years now. It’s a question that, frankly, haunts every open source technology.
The main criticism we had about the writing is that the author seemed to mix up the freedoms associated with open source technologies, with people abusing their RSS syndication feeds, and then pulled these disparate points together into a discussion of disrespect of that which is held in common.
I, like others, wrote a critical comment to the post and was somewhat surprised when the author, Dana Blankenhorn, responded in an email back. We ended up having a very cordial discussion, going back and forth about what each other meant with our writing.
Dana’s concern, and rightfully, is if open source is ‘open’ who controls it and keeps it from chaos? I wrote a long reply about open source and his analogy, and he asked if he could print a shortened version of it online, which he posted today. I said sure, but I’d probably print the full (though edited) writing in a post of my own, which follows at the end.
I did want to say, though, that Dana Blankenhorn responded with a great deal of patience and grace in the face of such overwhelming criticism. Hopefully he’ll be commended for this, as much as he was condemned yesterday for his original writing.
I don’t want to take your time, but I want to clarify the points I was trying to make, in addition to what others who work in open source are trying to make. And then I’ll leave you be.
First, let’s separate out discussions of the commons from open source, because the two are not the same. Your example of a commons is a city park that sounds like it’s poorly maintained, and in a community with a lot of homeless. Somewhere in San Francisco, then.
Anyone can access this park, and piss on the grass, sleep on the benches, and drop their garbage on the sidewalk. They can also let their dogs poop and not clean up. Now this all assumes of course that the common community doesn’t pay taxes to hire people to clean, and police to monitor the site, and doesn’t create rules and laws governing the use of the park.
Still, people can pretty much do what they want as long as no police are around.
Returning to the software: contrary to your assumption, open source code is not ‘owned’ by the commons. People can’t just jump into the code and start hacking away.
For instance, your site uses WordPress. This is a GPL licensed piece of code, and you can’t get much more ‘open source’ than GPL, which means anyone can copy the code and make modifications and do what they want with this code. The only stipulation is that you can’t apply a more restrictive license on any code derived from the source.
This sounds chaotic, doesn’t it? I mean anyone, just anyone can hack away at the code. Ohmigod! This is terrible. Quick! Tell ZD that they need to switch to Movable Type before your site gets contaminated with odd functionality!
Seriously, people can’t come in from the street and touch the original codebase much less do anything harmful to it. You see, and this is where your analogy really falls down flat, the code for WordPress is controlled by a small group of developers that can restrict, heavily, who is involved in development on WordPress, and what changes are incorporated into the tool’s codebase. In fact, if anything, this is a problem with some open source projects–too small a group, too much personal ego, can result in too heavy a restrictions on what does and does not happen with future revisions.
Now, what can happen is that if I decide I want to go a new direction with WordPress and it differs significantly enough from the WordPress development team, I can ‘fork’ the code. What this means is that I can grab a snapshot of the code and go my own direction, maintaining my own version of the code. In fact, this is something I am doing–creating a new version of weblogging software called Wordform that will be a fork of WordPress 1.3.
Sure I can copy the WordPress code and hack all I want – but I can’t modify the codebase for WordPress; not unless I can negotiate for the change with the WordPress team. Since my vision for the code differs so much, it’s easier just to fork the code (not something done trivially, believe me, which is why you don’t see this happening that frequently).
This is open source. This is how many open source efforts work. Apache’s a good example of a larger project, with a bigger team–but you still have to follow the rules and ‘prove’ yourself before you’re allowed in to hack the code. And there are Apache architects that strictly control future directions for this tool, which is why it rarely undergoes through major changes. Notice how people are still using Apache 1.3 for the most part? That’s because the Apache team has to move so carefully to maintain faith with their current installed customer base. Heck, Microsoft blew it’s customers away with Longhorn and .NET and did so with a massive amount of arrogance and indifference; that’s why I went from being an author of books about Microsoft technology to only writing about open source: open source maintains better faith with its users.
Now, the same constraints about WordPress are true for RSS 2.0, though it’s released under Creative Commons; you can’t modify the specification and still have it released as ‘RSS 2.0′. You can create a new syndication feed specification, but then you have to convince a million or so people to use it–not trivial, ask the Atom folks.
You’ve said that people can disrespect open source because it’s held in the commons. Rather than your park analogy, open source is more similar to the Zoo here in St. Louis: I have to go during open hours, and I have to follow certain fairly strict rules while I’m there. Yet the Zoo is part of the city’s public trust–that commons you reference.
As for the garbage you get in your syndication feed: the most open aspect of open source is that you have the right to ‘openly’ unsubscribe from the syndication feed that dumps the crap on you. In other words, if you don’t like the park you’re walking in, walk somewhere else. That’s your responsibility as the user in the open source equation.
The comment spammers now seem indifferent as to whether their comments show up or not. Their (or I should say ‘his’ since it’s one known person) behavior is more in the nature of a malicious act than anything else now.
Good comments are now ending up in my moderation queue solely because the spammers hit so much they trigger the throttle. At this time I’m putting in controls that close a post down for comments if it’s over ten days old. No more moderation queue, which disappoints me.
This is a high priority item in Wordform — to come up with a solution to the comment spam problem without closing out good comments, and without blacklists that can be fooled into blocking on good sites, and without registration. If I do come up with a solution, will you all crown me Queen for a Day?
In the meantime, I have to just shut the door on past posts.
I am finding that there’s a sub-culture that exists within coffee shops. There are those who rush in and grab a cup of coffee, and still others who stop by for sweets for work. Now the lunchtime crowd is starting to come in.
Amidst all of these people who scurry and scatter about are those like myself, who grab a roll and a cup of coffee, which we’ll nurse for the next hour or two, as we sit and read our papers or books; or like the newer generation of cafe society, open our computers and type away. But not all the time, because to not look up from time to time is to miss the magic of the moment.
We tend to congregate in one area of the cafe, and we chat quietly from time to time when one of us happens to catch the eyes of another. I’ve already shown my computer to a retired gentleman who is thinking of buying one to keep up with his grandkids. I expect to see him with an iBook one day.
Another gentleman sits and does crosswords, while a lady about my age, a former mainframe programmer, studies books on new technologies a couple of tables away. Across from me is a Nun having lunch with her friend, and every time I catch her eye, she smiles at me as if we’re sharing some kind of secret. Rather than be intrusive, it adds to the feeling that sitting here has somehow pulled us out of time and place, and given us a new space in which to explore — books, crosswords, something online, each other.
Years ago, philosophers and artists and writers and others mad with creativity and drunk on wine and discovery, would sit in cafes for hours and hours and from these times would come the works that astound us even now. Somehow, somewhere, we’ve lost this society, with our phones and our televisions and our computers, and we are both less and more because of it: less because of the loss of the mystic; more because we’re coming to understand that the mystic relies less on place than on person.
I doubt that I will pull a masterpiece from my time here, in this tiny shadow of society, but I’m sure that I’ll find both contentment and inspiration. And a good cup of coffee–not to be taken lightly, you understand.
I’ll probably leave soon; making room at my table, which I’ve occupied for two hours. It’s tough, though. to leave the smell of the baked goods and homemade soups, and to give up my seat by the window overlooking the outdoor seating. The weather is nice and a foursome with a dog and a small child is sitting outside. The child just came up to the window, all curly brown hair and toothy smile, patted at the glass and gave me a grin.
However, too much of anything and the magic begins to fade and wonderous become ordinary. Besides, it’s nice out and a walk sounds good.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine
(Insert your favorite mental image of troll here)
Introducing the troll
We all know what a weblogging troll is; it’s the person, man or woman, who writes a comment or comments in post after post trying to pick a fight with one or more members of a comment thread. This is not to confuse the person with the random abuser who comes in through Google and writes, ‘This site sux’ or something to that effect. No the troll is nothing if not persistent.
A troll can appear, day in and day out, and almost become a friend through familiarity. Almost.
Sometimes the troll only appears when you post on a specific topic. Other times they appear after a long absence, write a flurry of nasty comments, and then disappear again.
I know of one troll who is fast gaining somewhat legendary status among many of the weblogs I frequent for the length of his comments; not to mention the vitriolic nature of most of his writing–when you can understand it.
Now, we can all get into little flame fests in comments, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; after all, if this was all sweetness and light it would be extremely dull. In addition, we can all get cranky, passionate, determined, angry, pissy, whatever depending on topic and other people’s responses. But this is not the same as being a troll.
No, a mark of a troll is that their only purpose in commenting in your post is to pull attention away from what you write, and what others write, on to themselves. They want the spotlight, but rather than start their own weblog and maybe dwindle into obscurity (and a troll most likely will, because they primarily only know how to write in an antagonistic style), they’ll come and steal yours. In doing so, they’ll wreck havoc on your space and what could be a good discussion thread.
What’s frustrating about a troll is that they’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong, again and again. If you ask them, then, why they keep coming back, they’ll say something to the effect of, “It’s a freeworld and I’ll go where I want to.”
You can’t appeal to a troll’s better nature to just leave, and it’s illegal to shoot them. So what can you do with a troll?
Bake them, mash them, put them in a pie…
The surest approach is to turn off comments, or require stringent comment registration.
Unfortunately that’s allowing your space to be controlled by another person–a malevant person who wants nothing more than to demonstrate his or her power. In addition, you lose out on the casual passerby who also happens to have something pretty terrific to say; or to the anonymous person who again, has something worthwhile to bring to the topic.
You can keep your space open and delete the troll’s comments, instead.
A good approach. However, this carries with it a risk. For instance, the troll could keep coming back with the same comment, forcing you to spend a lot of time cleaning your comments. In addition, other people will invariably respond to the troll, so you’re left with the dilemma about whether you should delete their comments, too.
You could also block them, by blocking their name or IP address.
This is usually not effective. The troll will just switch providers, or even use a proxy to write their comments; blocking on an IP is not worth the time. Also, anyone can change their name from comment to comment.
In addition, there’s an unsual risk associated with this one. When I blocked that aforementioned troll, who is getting a dubious reputation of troll extraordinaire, he actually went into other people’s weblogs who I read and started writing about me. Some of what he wrote was just odd; others of it was a deliberate attempt to embarrass me. Then I was forced to have to ask the weblogger to remove the comments; not all were happy about having to do this, because they didn’t believe in deleting any comments.
I now have a policy in my comments that you don’t use my space to bash another if the other isn’t around to defend themselves, or if the other isn’t the topic of the post.
Reason with the troll
You’re kidding, right?
Okay, so what can you do.
Don’t feed the troll
Ignore them.
This was the hardest one for me to learn, and is a policy difficult to adhere to at times. However, unless their comment is pretty horrible, letting it slide and not delete it or even acknowledge it exists is a very effective weapon against the troll. It takes away that power they wanted. Nothing deflates the troll more than to just ignore them.
More than that, though, you have to educate your other commenters to just ignore the troll.
There’s a couple of primarily political weblogs I read that have a very persistent troll in them (not the same troll). These are people who write comments almost invariably counter to the general flow of conversation; enough to know that they’re not writing about what interests them, or responding to the thread, as much as they want to pick a fight.
In each of these sites, they get their fight. The other semi-regular or regular commenters almost always fall for the bait and respond and the thread degenerates into an incoherent brawl. Eventually the site owner will come in and say, “If you don’t like what I write, why do you come back?”Of course we know why he or she (mainly he I’ve noticed) keeps coming back — look at the nourishment they suck out from the post and the comment thread each time they come back?
What the site owner should be saying is, “Folks, stop feed the troll.” In other words, educate your other commenters not to respond to the troll.
This isn’t to say that you should ignore people who disagree. Disagreement, even passionate, satirical, biting, snarky disagreement is healthy in this environment. If a person is disagreeing with the topic, you can tell by their writing that they are responding to it.
The troll, on the other hand, is not responding to the topic as much as they are trying to take over both the topic and the thread. Sometimes the difference is subtle; after a while, though, you’ll see a pattern form, and you’ll know if you have a passionate commenter who disagrees, or a troll.
However, even ignoring the troll may not impact on the densest, most obtuse, of the breed. That’s when you have to bring out the big gun…
The big gun in troll defense
Laughter.
